Tony Mowbray has been reflecting proudly on the solid foundations he put in place at the Riverside.

The club legend left under a cloud as he was axed as boss with his team in trouble.

But he can claim to have left a bright legacy with a fistful of his signings still first team fixtures as Boro push for promotion under Aitor Karanka.

Mowbray took over from Gordon Strachan in October 2010 as an expensively assembled outfit drifted towards the relegation rocks and was axed in October 2013 with his own side flailing just above the drop spots.

But in between he balanced the books, built a new team on a budget and reshaped behind the scenes infrastructure.

And as Mowbray and former Riverside assistant Mark Venus shape a long-term framework at League One Coventry, he has looked back with pride at his work at Boro.

“But it’s a long process, a difficult process, particularly if you don’t have a lot of money to spend.

“If you recruit in haste you’re going to fall down a big hole; if you take your time and find the right ones you’ve got a chance of building a good team.

“Middlesbrough are a club who have the money to do it now but the pleasing thing for me is that the core of that team is still the team we were trying to build when we brought in free transfers and £100,000 here and there,” he said, of his boyhood club, now third in the Championship.

“Grant Leadbitter came as a free transfer from Ipswich, Albert Adomah came from Bristol City and we actually spent some money on him. We managed to sell Joe Bennett to Aston Villa and spent a quarter of that money on Albert.

“Ben Gibson was coming through as a young player and I sent him out on loan to Tranmere to develop and then came into the team.

“We took George Friend for £100,000 from Doncaster Rovers who had just been relegated to League One at the time.

“Veno signed Daniel Ayala two days after I left, so the plans were in place to build and yet we didn’t have the funds to do it.”

Tony Mowbray with Mark Venus

And Mowbray, an inspirational captain in his Ayresome Park playing days for Boro, was quick to praise Venus - briefly caretaker after Mogga was axed - for his skill at shrewd talent spotting.

Hartlepool-born Venus played with Mowbray at Ipswich and has worked alongside him in the dug-out at Hibernian, West Brom, Celtic and Boro before teaming up again with him at Coventry.

“Mark’s very good at finding the diamonds amongst the pebbles,” he said. “You are walking along the beach and there’s thousands of pebbles and the secret is to find the diamonds.

“That’s why if you recruit in haste you lose your job.”

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As well as a sound under-pinning job at Boro, Mowbray was equally successful at West Brom, who he took to promotion in 2007-08. Some of his players still feature for the Baggies in the Premier League now.

“At West Brom we were beaten in the play-off final by Derby at Wembley in the first year,” he recalled.

“We practically sold the team that summer - Diomansy Kamara, Jason Koumas, Curtis Davies and Paul McShane - and we brought in James Morrison, Chris Brunt, Jonas Olsson, Graham Dorrens and Youssouf Mulumbu.

“We managed to win the league the following season. And until last year, they were all still playing in their team.

“Morrison, Brunt and Olsson are still regulars to this day, eight or nine years later.

“You have to take your time and find the right ones you’ve got a chance of building a good team.”

“When you’ve got enough of them, when you’ve got that infrastructure, you can develop a system, a shape, and hopefully it will be dynamic with good ball retention and lots of goals.”